“I did fail the test, and I take full responsibility for it,” the 28-year-old told reporters during a news conference in Los Angeles.
The five-time major champion said that a family doctor had been prescribing her a drug called Mildronate (also known as Meldonium) since 2006. “I had several health issues going on at the time,” she explained. “I was getting sick very often, I had a deficiency of magnesium, irregular EKG results, family history of diabetes – and that’s one of the medications, along with several others that I had received.”
Sharapova made a point to mention that she had been legally taking the medicine for the past decade, as Meldonium did not become banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency until this year. Sharapova insisted that she was not made aware of the change.
“I made a huge mistake,” she admitted. “I let my fans down. I let the sport down that I’ve been playing since the age of 4, that I love so deeply.”
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